SHA unveils $14M deal to reduce waits for MRIS
10K scans to be provided across province each year under contract with Mayfair
SASKATOON The Saskatchewan Health Authority says a new $14-million partnership with Mayfair Diagnostics will help curb the province’s staggering MRI backlog.
Under the three-year contract, Mayfair will provide at least 10,000 publicly funded MRIS across the province each year: 4,500 at a new facility in Saskatoon near St. Paul’s Hospital slated to open in August and 5,500 at its existing facility in Regina.
Health Minister Jim Reiter says that will help cut stubbornly high wait times for the diagnostic test. While the SHA says emergency patients get MRIS within 24 hours, the average wait for all other scans was 80 days in December 2019. Semi-urgent cases are supposed to receive the test within a week; in June 2019, the average wait time for semi-urgent cases was nearly four weeks.
“Certainly our MRI wait list is too long. We think this is one of many steps forward,” Reiter said.
Reiter says the growing wait times are due to swelling numbers of patients being referred for MRIS, which he believes is due to the province’s growing — and progressively older — population and the fact MRIS are seen as an increasingly “standard” test.
The SHA’S last budget allotted $141.4 million for medical imaging services, along with $2.4 million to replace medical imaging equipment.
The health authority also expanded MRI operation hours in Saskatoon and Regina.
But even after those efforts, capacity hasn’t kept up with demand: there were 38,957 patients referred for MRI in 2016 compared to 46,180 in 2019, or an 18 per cent increase in demand compared to an 11 per cent increase in capacity.
The long-awaited contract with Mayfair, whose facilities will be privately operated but publicly funded, comes after a 14-month negotiation and signing process after the health authority’s request for proposals closed in August 2018.
Dr. Paul Babyn of the Saskatchewan Health Authority said the long contract process was partially because of negotiations between the authority and Mayfair over the quantity and type of services provided. One of the SHA’S positions was that radiologists, who can interpret MRI results, should be on-site.
He called the contract a “significant” step toward meeting the needs for diagnostic services in Saskatchewan. “This is a very good start. I think there is additional capacity we would like to be seeing inside the system,” Babyn said.
The provincial opposition is unconvinced increasing capacity is the full solution. NDP Leader Ryan Meili said at a news conference on Friday that the new capacity is a positive step, but he believes patients being referred to MRIS even when it’s not medically necessary is at the root of the problem.
Reiter agreed that unneeded tests are part of the problem. He said the ministry is working with physicians to try to curb unnecessary referrals. He and Babyn both said the authority is moving toward a centralized booking service for MRIS to streamline when and where patients can access the service.
“We’re going to move towards centralizing everything,” Reiter said of the SHA. “Diagnostics will be different, but again, that will be
a multi-year approach.”